Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

by Nir Eyal

Variable rewards are one of the most powerful tools companies implement to hook users;

Though variable rewards are powerful, they do not make products irresistible. We are more powerful than anything the tech companies might do to try and distract us. I discuss how to get the best out of tech without letting it get the best of us in my new book, Indistractable. What products do you engage with that utilize variable rewards? Which help you build healthy habits? Which lead you to engage in unhealthy habits?

Viral Cycle Time is the amount of time it takes a user to invite another user, and it can have a massive impact.

With all the talk of people wanting their products or services to "go viral," this is an under-appreciated factor in what really drives exponential growth. Frequent use is very important! Have you used any products or services you liked so much you shared it with others?

Painkillers solve an obvious need, relieving a specific pain, and often have quantifiable markets.

This painkiller versus vitamin dichotomy is interesting to explore in our own lives. For me, products like Evernote or Fitbod, started out as vitamins and became painkillers. Which products or services have become more valuable to you the more you used them?

The ultimate goal of a habit-forming product is to solve the user’s pain by creating an association so that the user identifies the company’s product or service as the source of relief.

I explore this idea further in my second book, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. In order to control our habits, we need to understand the pain that drives our behavior. Can you identify the discomfort you are trying to escape when you use various products and services habitually? Which are helpful and which take you off track?

Fogg states that all humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain; to seek hope and avoid fear; and finally, to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection.

I've changed my thinking on this a bit since publishing Hooked. While Fogg's six factors are helpful in product design, if we go a little deeper, all six elements can be boiled down to the desire to escape discomfort. Even action in the pursuit of pleasurable sensations is spurred by the desire to restore psychological homeostasis. I discuss this with much more depth in my next book, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. I kept this in the updated edition of Hooked because we need this level of granularity to build better products and services. However, when it comes to personal behavior change, I think it is more useful to go a layer up in abstraction.

“Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time . . . Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.”

This really is the definition of "technology" in a nut shell. All technology does is reduce the distance from the recognition of the need to the alleviation of that need. From the cotton gin to the iPhone, technology saves us steps to do what we want to do. It's a good insight to keep in mind as we design products to improve people's lives by reducing unnecessary steps.

The study demonstrates the endowed progress effect, a phenomenon that increases motivation as people believe they are nearing a goal.

The "investment phase" of the Hooked Model is perhaps the most overlooked step. I still see so much opportunity to as users to do a bit of work to improve the product with use. What products and services do you use that ask you to do small bits of work that store value in the product? What products get better with use in your life?

The study revealed that what draws us to act is not the sensation we receive from the reward itself, but the need to alleviate the craving for that reward.

This is a very important lesson on how all behavior is spurred by a desire to escape discomfort. When it comes to breaking bad habits, this realization is an important first step. I explore this in much more depth in my second book, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. You can find out more about Indistractable on Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44595007-indistractable.